Songwriting/Composition Class Resources
List of Resources Needed to Create New Classes Including Materials and Supplies
Collins, Ryan. “Tips for Designing a Course from Scratch.” Curriculum Planning (blog). Edutopia, 2023. https://www.edutopia.org/article/designing-course-middle-high-school/.
This source, written by an experienced high school teacher, outlines the process of how they designed a new elective course. Topics include writing objectives, setting up the scope and sequence of the course, and selecting materials. The author poses several questions to consider when creating a new course, as well as how to evaluate the course and adjust through surveys and feedback from students. While this source is not music course specific, the principles could be used by music educators to craft non-traditional ensembles and music courses in their respective schools.
Literature on this topic for educators
Hickey, Maud. Music Outside the Lines: Ideas for Composing in K-12 Music Classrooms. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. https://a.co/d/2d5I5OP.
Music Outside the Lines is a valuable resource for teaching music composition because it clearly explains why composition belongs at the core of the music curriculum and shows teachers how to implement it effectively. Maud Hickey demonstrates that all music teachers already have the skills needed to guide students through meaningful composition experiences, even without formal composition training. The book provides a wide range of practical classroom activities that support creative and musical growth through composing. It also addresses key instructional challenges—such as assessment, notation, and technology—within a composition-focused framework. Central to the text is a flexible curricular model that organizes composition activities into logical, teachable units. Together, these elements make the book an essential, practical guide for educators seeking to teach composition with confidence and creativity.
Hopkins, Michael T. “Collaborative Composing in High School String Chamber Music Ensembles.” Journal of Research in Music Education 62, no. 4 (2015): 405–424.
This study is a strong resource for teaching composition because it demonstrates how collaborative composing can be effectively implemented in high school string ensembles. Findings show that students primarily used musical, task-focused communication rather than verbal discussion, supporting composition as an active, performance-based learning process. The quality of collaboration was strongly linked to the quality of the resulting compositions, highlighting the instructional importance of structured group work. Mixed-gender ensembles showed more balanced collaboration, offering useful guidance for ensemble grouping in composition projects. Student enjoyment of the composing process was also strongly related to higher-quality compositions, reinforcing the educational value of engaging, collaborative composition experiences.
Kennedy, Mary. “Listening to the Music: Compositional Processes of High School Composers.” Journal of Research in Music Education 50 (July 2002): 94–110. https://doi-org.libproxy.unm.edu/10.2307/3345815.
This study is a valuable resource for teaching composition because it closely examines how high school students actually compose music. By documenting students’ compositional processes across multiple tasks, it identifies practical strategies teachers can use to structure composition activities. The resulting model highlights the importance of listening, individual thinking time, and improvisation in student composing. These insights help educators design composition lessons that support authentic musical decision-making. The study also emphasizes that while common processes exist, students’ compositional paths are highly individual, underscoring the need for flexible and student-centered approaches to teaching composition.
Read, Gardner. Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice. New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1979. https://a.co/d/b9pp162
This source provides instructions for writing music manuscripts, scores, and parts. This is a good source because it is one of the most comprehensive and authoritative guides to notating music clearly and accurately. The book systematically explains both traditional and contemporary notation practices, making it especially useful for composers and educators working with a wide range of musical styles. Read provides clear rationales for notation choices, helping readers understand not just what to write, but why certain notational solutions are more effective. Its many musical examples illustrate real-world compositional and performance challenges, supporting practical application in teaching composition. Because it emphasizes clarity, consistency, and performer readability, the book is particularly valuable for helping students learn how to communicate musical ideas effectively through notation.
Curriculum, Method Books, and Lesson plans structured around national music standards
Berklee Online College of Music. Songwriting Digital Handbook. Berklee Online, 2025. https://cloud.info.berklee.edu/bol-songwriting?campaign_id=7013r0000029G2zAAE&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=bol-google-text-interest-songwriting&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23324341856&gbraid=0AAAAAD8Oo7ChtdoFrd-mOwp5ymkG8cDcI&gclid=CjwKCAiA0eTJBhBaEiwA-Pa-heIqt2Oe43DnrwqwfNX7l_BSbdYGNrmWyzXsd6mt_eXIa9T4_oDSwBoCjDkQAvD_BwE.
This digital handbook, made available for free to anyone online who registers with their website, is an 89-page guide with lessons and features written by different professors at Berklee School of Music. The lessons in this book, while initially written with older students in mind, can be adapted for younger students too with some effort. Courses that the lessons come from include “Arranging for Songwriters: Instrumentation and Production in Songwriting,” “Commercial Songwriting Techniques,” “Collaborative Songwriting,” “Songwriting: Melody,” “Lyric Writing: Writing Lyrics to Music” and more. This source, which has many valuable songwriting tips, does not have complete lesson plans, standards, or assessments, and secondary educators would need to build solid lessons around these ideas. The handbook is an advertisement for their online school and courses and is meant to be a taste of what it would be like at their school, which is a useful resource for teachers who have serious songwriting students for pupils.
Bush, Zachary. Intro to Composition in the Classroom Sample Lesson Plans, Assignments and Rubrics. self-published, 2026. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YUprxzygjg6PMYgN-IHJWMw8py1kxOG3?usp=drive_link.
These lessons, assignments, and rubrics were shared at the 2026 NMMEA All-State conference by Dr. Zachary Bush, a middle and high school orchestra director with degrees in Music Theory Pedagogy, Performance, Music in Composition and Music Education. Dr. Bush created and implemented these plans with his students in New Mexico. They are great introductory lessons that help students start thinking about creating musical ideas and communicating their ideas with others.
Giotta, Kelsey. “Songwriting for Music Educators: Ways to Introduce Songwriting to Students at All Levels.” NAfME (blog), 2021. https://nafme.org/blog/songwriting-music-educators/.
This source was presented to the NAfME PreK-12 Learning Collaborative and is geared towards educators who question if songwriting is within their abilities and in their students' best interests. Practical methods are outlined with ways to introduce songwriting to students at all levels. The author has taught songwriting units annually for the past five years of their eleven years of teaching music and addresses teaching song form, lyrics, chords, and melody. This article is a good place to start when considering creating a songwriting course or implementing a shorter unit on it first to the standard band, choir, or orchestra class that one already teaches.
Green, Lucy. Hear, Listen, Play! How To Free Your Students’ Aural, Improvisation, and Performance Skills. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. https://a.co/d/4aeX8Me.
This source, based on extensive and systematic research, is a handbook for all music educators who wish to help their students with aural, improvisation, and performing skills. Designed to be versatile enough to help one-on-one instrumental students, ensembles, and classroom students ages 10-18+, this source practically puts into action informal and popular music learning practices. The source includes teaching strategies and sections preparing educators how their students might respond to the suggested activities, preparing teachers to be better educators in these situations. The musical skills in this source are particularly useful for musicians, composers and songwriters and make music creating feel more accessible, especially for younger students. Digital resources in this book, for teaching students to learn to play by ear are found here: https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780199995769/resources/
Koops, Alexander, and John L. Whitener. Composition Concepts for Band and Orchestra: Incorporating Creativity in Ensemble Settings. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. https://a.co/d/eivOKf6.
This source is a helpful teaching book that can be used for ALL ensembles (not just bands and orchestras like the title suggests). The book is organized into ten chapters, each focusing on one aspect of composition (soundscapes, timber, rhythm, ostinato, texture, harmony, form, etc.) and includes a helpful introduction section on how to use it. The chapters contain teacher guides with objectives, vocabulary words, multiple lesson activities, student worksheets to aid students in taking notes as the teacher explains concepts, plus space for students to create using non-standard notation and then turn in the worksheets for teachers to assess. Further, each chapter contains recommended listening pieces with composers, sample repertoire for band and orchestra (organized by difficulty), sample composition ideas, extension activities, and sources are referenced in each chapter. Assessment rubrics are provided in the appendix along with dynamic charts, a glossary of composition terms, creative warmups, and recommended resources for further sources. This is a practical and useful tool for teaching instrumental composition to students in grades 6+.
Miranda, Taylor. The Songwriting Breakdown. N.p.: Self-published by Taylor Miranda, 2024. https://a.co/d/8Ur1dnz.
Written by a seasoned and passionate songwriter and music teacher, this source helps educators navigate the songwriting process and core techniques. Educators can use this book of ideas as the place to springboard writing prompts, lyric creation, and song cohesion. Each chapter contains popular song examples, plus many short exercises that would be easy to use in the classroom setting, including awareness, analysis, creation, and listening activities as well as sections on copyright and protecting ones’ music. This is a highly creative book that can help inspire educators how to structure a songwriting course, especially focused on the lyric creation aspect.
Reinhert, Kat. “Demystifying Songwriting.” In General Music: Dimensions of Practice by Carlos R. Abril and Brent M. Gault, eds., 256-276. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. https://a.co/d/dMF2zuI.
This source, found in a larger book for music educators learning about general music methods and classes, was written to guide music teachers through a framework for learning and teaching songwriting. Meant to help students who can already read and write in a given language (likely 4th grade+), this source contains three lesson ideas and three lesson vignettes on different sub-topics, plus a rubric for assessing songs. There are tables with information meant to help students make connections between aural activities and vocabulary, including genres, forms, compositional elements and literary devices. This source is a different and interesting way of approaching songwriting, from a less-threatening place of analysis, connecting and responding before creating one’s own works. This source could be used as an introduction unit in a songwriting class, or interspersed into a larger class.
Tweedy, Jeff. How to Write One Song. New York: Penguin Random House, 2020. https://a.co/d/4D2Poll.
This is an easy-to-read book that gives great practical advice on how to write songs. Written by the founding member and leader of the Grammy Award-winning American rock band Wilco, the book discusses composition, obstacles that can make writing songs difficult, and offers solid solutions for experimentation. The book offers seven exercises for writing lyrics, and four recommendations to try as you practice writing songs. These could easily be the basis for lessons and units in a secondary songwriting course. A musical educator who is inexperienced with songwriting could read this book and gain confidence to guide students through the songwriting process.
Vinci eLearn. “ Project Based Learning Songwriting Curriculum.”: Teachers Pay Teachers, 2025. Accessed December 9, 2025. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Project-Based-Learning-Songwriting-Curriculum-4736336.
This curriculum package, sold on the Teachers Pay Teachers website for $25, is a 127-page document that approaches songwriting using a project-based learning method. This curriculum is pedagogically sound and includes inquiry activities, assessment rubrics, and student feedback forms. The lessons are well scaffolded, breaking the process into four steps (lyrics, music elements, bass guitar and creating beats, and putting it all together in lead sheets) that could easily take a semester to master. This curriculum was designed for grades 4-12+ by a retired New York City Department of Education Music Teacher who taught a variety of music courses to students K-12 and has created professional development for New York and New Jersey Departments of Education.
Videos
Goldmacher, Cliff. “The Dos and Don’ts of Songwriting Collaboration.” Lynda.com, 2015. http://www.lynda.com/Audio-Music-Music-Business-tutorials/Dos-Donts-Songwriting-Collaboration/368053-2.html?org=aut.ac.nz&utm_source=marc.
This eVideo from 2015 is a 24-minute online tutorial designed as an educational and instructional film. Songwriter, producer, engineer, author and recording studio owner Cliff Goldmacher discusses his collaborations with leading musicians in the popular music world, including Ke$ha, Keb’Mo,’ and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. He gives advice for what to do and what not to do when collaborating with other musicians and songwriters. This video is short enough to be effective in a class-period setting and provides applicable advice that could be used when having students collaborate with one another in a songwriting class.
Music Will. “Songwriting Archives.” Music Will JamZone, 2025. https://jamzone.musicwill.org/instrument/songwriting/.
This resource is a collection of 5 videos produced by Music Will teaching songwriting concepts. There are two units on songwriting, two on Hip Hop songwriting and composition, and one with ideas for composing using Lego bricks (which is geared more towards elementary school classes). These are free videos to help educators give their students songwriting tools. For students who love songwriting, you can direct them to the Music Will Songwriting Exhibition contest, which accepts submissions annually. For more details visit https://musicwill.org/songwriting-exhibition/
Assessments
Bailey, Betsy Lee. “Composition Rubric.” My Musical Musings (blog). The Music of Betsy Lee Bailey, 2014. https://www.betsyleebaileymusic.com/my-musical-musings/composition-rubric.
This composition rubric is the result of the author’s efforts to objectively judge the quality of creative, artistic musical works. The Music Educators Association created a composition rubric and the author evaluated it plus several others in their creation of this source. This rubric is on a scale of 1-4 (with 1 being the highest) in three sub-categories: Aesthetic Appeal, Creativity, and Craftmanship. This is a helpful resource for teachers to turn to when assessing their students’ songwriting efforts using a less biased method.
EasleyBass. 2021. “iRubric: Music Theory Rubric - M3WC8C.” Rcampus.com, 2021. https://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?sp=yes&code=M3WC8C&.
This is a comprehensive rubric for a high school composition assignment. There are 9 categories of assessment, including the music score, notation, meter and rhythm, harmony, overall performance, lyrics, roman numeral and chord symbols, lead sheet, and performance. There are 4 levels of proficiency listed (including very good, good, fair and redo) that outline the expectations listed to reach the level of proficiency. The expectations are clear and largely objective, minus one criteria of “creativity” in the overall performance category. This rubric covers a wide range of skills to assess in a composition and could easily be tailored to your custom class assignment. This is a great resource for educators to use in composition assessment.